FLYERS: Timonen shows off medal, addresses team mentality

USA forward Zach Parise and Finland defenseman Kimmo Timonen vie for the puck during the first period of the men's bronze medal ice hockey game at the 2014 Winter Olympics, Saturday, Feb. 22, 2014, in Sochi, Russia. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

VOORHEES, N.J. — Kimmo Timonen returned to practice with the Flyers Wednesday, carrying two souvenirs from the Olympics.

One was the bronze medal he helped Finland win. The other was the practical message that it could convey, 5,400 miles to the west.

“I said, ‘Some of you guys said we never had a chance,’” Timonen said, smiling. “I said, ‘I’ll show you the medal, and maybe you’ll change your mind.’ But it shows that you never know. It’s a team sport. And it is good to show the Flyers that. If you play as a team, you can beat anybody.”

Timonen had played in his fifth and final Olympics with Finland nearly winning the gold medal, falling 2-1 to Sweden in the semifinals, then blasting the United States 5-0 in the third-place game.

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Because his team played the maximum number of Olympic games, Timonen’s return to the Flyers was delayed — and will be delayed at least one more night. After practice Wednesday, Craig Berube said Timonen will not play Thursday against the San Jose Sharks at the Wells Fargo Center.

That sounded fine with the 38-year-old defenseman, who admitted that he’d felt like he was “skating in mud” during practice.

“I’ll tell you this, I didn’t get back until Monday, and it has kind of been weird the last two days,” Timonen said. “It has been tough to sleep. And we were on the plane for 14 hours. I am not a young boy anymore, so it takes a little bit of time to recover.

“I haven’t skated since the game ended. And we celebrated for a couple days, let’s put it that way.”

Celebrations happen, and not always on schedule. Despite the pre-Olympics heckling and doubts from his Flyers’ teammates that the trip to Sochi would be worthwhile, Timonen was proud of the bronze medal, displaying it for TV cameras after practice.

“Show off,” Hal Gill needled.

But a hockey prize is a hockey prize, and the way Timonen has it figured, he’s good for at least one more this season.

“The Olympics are over, and like I said, we celebrated there,” Timonen said. “But now it is time to get back with the Flyers and focus on Flyers hockey. We have some big games coming up. And if there are a couple goals in my life, one was winning the gold medal, the other winning the Stanley Cup. And we still have a chance to do that. So I will enjoy this, but now it is time to focus on playing Flyers hockey.

“If we play as a team and come together as a team, I really believe we have a good chance. And the way we ended before the break, the goalies were playing really well. So if we play as a team, we have a really good chance. But it takes everybody. It takes a team. And the way we played there with Team Finland, we played as a team. We didn’t have any big stars, other than (Teemu) Selanne. And if you play as a team and have good goalies, anything is possible. It’s still hockey. We come here and it’s the same thing. If we play as a team and the goalies play well, we always have a chance.”

The Flyers were on a four-game winning streak at the Olympic break, and Thursday will play for the first time in 19 days. Only Timonen, Mark Streit, Andrej Meszaros, Michael Raffl and Jake Voracek played in Sochi.

“It could be tough in the first period, with the legs a little bit,” Voracek said. “I think the timing is going to be a little bit off. But everybody has to be on the same page and doing well. The big thing will be timing. For us who were at the Olympics, it will be getting back to the smaller ice again. It’s going to be the first game in a while. But almost every team had some players in the Olympics, and the other players had some rest. So it is going to be the same for all of us.

“We have to make sure we play the game the way we did before the break.”

If so, any surprise is possible.

That, at least, is what Kimmo Timonen’s take-away from the Olympics would suggest.